


Plague Times Are Coming

by ncfan



Series: Legendarium Ladies April [38]
Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Anxiety, Arthedain, Death, Fem!Argeleb II, Gen, Mother-Son Relationship, POV Female Character, Plague, Plague Fic, Third Age, Tumblr: legendariumladiesapril, legendarium ladies april
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:34:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23833192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ncfan/pseuds/ncfan
Summary: Argeleb had ever been blessed with the gift of a reasonably peaceful reign. Would that it could have remained that way.
Series: Legendarium Ladies April [38]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/244393
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12
Collections: Legendarium Ladies April 2020





	Plague Times Are Coming

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the April 15, 2020 general prompt, [Absences and Distances](https://legendariumladiesapril.tumblr.com/post/615500196569300992/legendarium-ladies-april-prompts-for-april-15). Focuses on Argeleb II of Arnor, and yeah, I know, plague, but this is the fic I designated as my specific “Write at least one fic about one of the rulers of Arthedain or the chieftains of the Dúnedain I head canon as a woman” fic, and I did include a plague warning in the tags. That being said, this is not plague-heavy, and tread only as far as you care to.

Argeleb had held her throne for forty-seven years, and had had the good fortune of never having to contend with any major outbreak of illness within the borders of her lands. Truth be told, her rule had been an uneventful one, in general. Oh, Angmar yet fulminated entirely too close to the borders of Arthedain for Argeleb’s comfort, but there had never been any major assaults on Arthedain within Argeleb’s lifetime. There were the skirmishes on the marches, but those things were gloriously easy to put down and put away, never forgotten, but at the same time, never rising to the forefront of the worries that chased the dreams and waking thoughts of a queen of Arthedain.

The last great influx of people had, in fact, been not an invading army, but the migration of the Periannath to the lands beyond the Baranduin. Argeleb had granted them the land gladly enough—those lands were empty, and the Periannath, being small, to her eyes fragile people, the size of children, really, should be kept far away from any of the malice of Angmar. In any kingdom, there were people who could give no great service in force of arms to their kings or queens, and who must yet be protected, for they were the people of that king or queen, and kings and queens owed their people far more than the people owed their rulers. She bade them only to live virtuously, and live as any other virtuous person in Arthedain would. They were peaceable folk, and since Argeleb had left them to their own devices more than thirty years ago, all she had heard of them was the faithful payment of their taxes and a periodic gift of a cask of wine at Yule.

The settlement of the Periannath in their present lands had most likely been the most notable event of Argeleb’s reign thus far, and she would have been content had it remained such. Her father had ascended the throne when he was little more than a child, under circumstances Argeleb would never not regret, for they had precluded any chance of her knowing her grandfather as more than a name in a genealogical table, and the stories her father could tell her. Araphor had taken her to Amon Sûl when she was very young, and as they stood alone in the ruins of the great tower, he said something to her then that she had never since forgotten:

“My dear daughter, you should be happy to have a quiet reign. You should be happy to have a reign that all the chroniclers feel too boring to make much note of. My reign was not so quiet, at the start.” He cast a long, leaden look around at the ruins, eyes lingering on every last fallen stone. “I would have preferred it otherwise. If trouble fines you, my daughter, meet it. If you find wickedness sinking its claws into your lands or your people, repel it. But do not go fomenting wars or unrest. You will not profit by it. It will bring you only grief. A quiet land full of peaceful villages is also something worth striving for, even if the chroniclers would rather speak of war.”

Wise words, but then, her father had ever been a wise man, even if in his younger years valor was more required of him than wisdom. Wise words were they, and Argeleb had always seen the wisdom in following them. She was never her father’s equal with a sword, besides; it would have gone ill with her, and quickly, had she gone about fomenting battles that did not need to be fought.

But what happened when battle found her anyways, and it was not a battle of swords and spears and horses and shields, but of something she could not grasp nor even touch, something beyond her power to make banish from her lands?

Argeleb had had few occasions to ask herself that question. She had never enjoyed it.

She was not enjoying it, now.

Argeleb nodded absently as the messenger exited her study, letter in hand. He would stay and enjoy the hospitality of her halls for a night, and then begin the long journey south once more, and as she thought of him, she wondered what sort of house he would return to. Wondered if there would be a light in the window when he at last made his weary way to the door, or if he would be greeted by silence and empty dark.

She had heard other news, of course; this messenger was not the first bearer of bad news to make their way up from the south. In the south of Middle-Earth, there were many who were fleeing the homes they had known all their lives for some kind of succor in the north, and they brought news with them, and that very thing they were fleeing…

Argeleb was currently debating the merits of closing the borders of Arthedain to foreigners for the time being—or, at least, their distant cousins from Gondor. Certain of her councilors believed this to be the wisest course of action. Herself, no matter which way she looked at the problem, Argeleb could not make the idea of shutting the borders to those who came to Arthedain in such terrible need any less despicable than it had seemed to her when first the idea was broached. And well did she remember the lore Master Elrond had taught her in the days of her youth, and the idea he had put to her, that there were illnesses that could be carried on the air. If such was the case here, closing the borders to those in need would be both despicable, and completely pointless.

So yes, she was currently leaning towards keeping the borders as open as they had been before rumors of plague had started to come to her from far in the south. Argeleb had little patience for despicable things, and even less for pointless things. There were other endeavors that were far more pressing.

(She had sent to Master Elrond for any advice he could give her. He had lived thousands of years, and even if the Elves did not sicken in the same way as Men, surely he must have had experience of plagues. Argeleb had yet to hear from him. She was hoping for a reply within a few days.)

To ask what measures had been put in place in Gondor would have also been pointless. Argeleb had, after all, been keeping up with the news of what was going on in Gondor. It was clear that, whatever they had or had not been doing, it had been completely ineffective.

The news she had just been given only cemented such an opinion.

Alone in her study (she had sent the guards out with the messenger, and though Argeleb knew that they must be standing just outside the door, well within earshot should she need them, the doors were thick enough as to give her at least the semblance of true privacy), Argeleb stared down at the letter, heart beating staccato and fast in her chest, just shy of nauseating. She had been staring down at it for what felt like an Age, willing the letters to spell out words other than what she had read, but to no avail. No matter at what angle she viewed the letter from, no matter what light was spilled upon it, it always read exactly the same thing.

A letter from the new king of Gondor, Tarondor son of Minastan, nephew of the late king Telemnar, informing her of the deaths of that same king Telemnar, his wife, and all of their children, all within a month of one another, all from just the same cause. A huge swath of the line of Anárion had been wiped out in one fell swoop, while Argeleb sat hundreds of miles away in the safety of Fornost, ignorant as to the full extent of the trials assailing her sister-kingdom in the south.

She had not known him. Argeleb’s grandfather had been the last ruler of Arthedain to visit their cousins in the south, and none of the royal line of Gondor had made the journey so far north to them since the days of King Beleg, centuries past. Argeleb had not known Telemnar. She had not known Telemnar’s wife, whose name the letter from Tarondor did not mention. She had not known any of Telemnar’s children. Argeleb thought that the last correspondence she had had from Telemnar had been seven years ago, when she received a missive congratulating her on forty years of peaceful, prosperous rule in Arthedain.

Telemnar was younger than Argeleb. He had acceded his throne under similar circumstances as Argeleb’s father, and when she had received the news of it, she had thought, for a moment, of making the long journey south, for she thought of the way her father’s eyes had grown distant and almost wet when he had told her of his own father, and she had thought…

Argeleb did not know what she had thought. The forefathers of their lines had been brothers, and hers the elder. Though their lines had long since split, and their relationship to one another extraordinarily remote after so many generations apart, she had thought of a newly fatherless man, and she had been thinking as an older sister might.

That had been two years ago. Sometimes, time moved with such terrifying speed that Argeleb did not know what to do with it.

Her heart moved in strange paths, as well. Her eyes were yet riveted on a letter that was made bloody with the light of a dying day, and she kept trying to make it say something other than what it said to her. She read the news of the death of the king of a distant land, and his family, and she felt as if she was being given the news of a cousin’s death, the news of the death of her cousin’s wife and all his children, who were her cousins, also.

That was not unreasonable, when she thought of it objectively. Telemnar _was_ her cousin. But the relationship was indeed so very remote, the miles between them so numerous, the lack of any real acquaintance so glaring, that Argeleb could only grapple with the strange feeling dwelling in her breast, trying to tell herself it was grief, and wonder at its origins.

Grief.

Grief.

She was grieving. But what Argeleb grieved for was the future of her land.

The report of the death of the king of Gondor and his wife and children was not the only report that had come into Argeleb’s hands this day. Would that it were so, and this was the worst she must contend with, but news would not wait for a settled heart and an untroubled mind.

Typically, Argeleb did not keep too close of an eye on the paths that illnesses cut through Arthedain. The Dúnedain were reasonably hardy, and gifted enough in medicine to keep those among their neighbors who were not Dúnedain healthy or, if they fell ill, keep them taken care of until they either recovered from their illness, or they were being lowered into the ground. None of her predecessors in Arthedain or Arnor had ever done so, and though the records that had survived the Downfall were rather fractured, and the greater part of them had gone to Gondor, Argeleb had never heard tell of any of the kings or reigning queens of Númenor keeping track of where illness spread in Númenor, no stories of records being kept of how many people fell ill, how many recovered, and how many died. The Men of Númenor, in the days before its dwindling, had been made of sterner stuff than the Dúnedain of Arthedain. If you were to tell Argeleb that the Númenóreans of, say, Tar-Telperiën’s time never fell ill at all, except by means of infection or poison, she would have found herself almost totally credulous. She had heard enough stories of the far greater might of her distant ancestors. This would not have been at all out of place.

Argeleb had not been keeping records, and if the queen did not think to keep records, then _perhaps_ there might be someone below her who had thought of it in her place and kept those records for their own peace of mind, but she had asked around, looking for that enterprising councilor or local magistrate or _clerk_ , but nothing had ever materialized. In this case, the queen had not thought to keep the records, and because she was not thinking about it, neither was anyone below her. After all, if it was worth starting to think about, _surely_ the queen would have thought of it first.

Another thing Argeleb’s father had told her was that she must be a shepherd for her people. In this case, she thought she would have liked some more independently-minded sheep.

But as the news first started making its way north of what was occurring further in the south of Eriador, Argeleb had instituted the process. Officials were assigned to track the spread of illness, to document the symptoms, to take count (as best they could) of the numbers of infected, the numbers who had recovered, the numbers who had died. _Where_ the disease was spreading, and how fast, that was a matter of intense, immediate concern. That had been months before now, but Argeleb had at least one of the gifts of the Númenóreans, and in this case, those nagging ideas that passed for foresight had served her well.

Would that it had turned out to be nothing but the fretting of an anxious, paranoid woman, but it had indeed served her well.

Argeleb put the letter whose words she had tried so hard to alter with the powers of her mind away, and picked up another, no less happily received missive, and this time, she knew she could not afford to deny the truth of the words. She could not afford to stare dumbly at the letter for minutes on end, refusing at first to absorb the words, refusing to accept the reality of them. She could not afford to look at the words that had been written for her benefit, and try to pretend that they meant something other than what they _obviously_ meant.

She was queen of Arthedain, and the queen of Arthedain must be willing to stare open-eyed at unpleasant truths.

The report had been sent from one of the villages near the south-eastern border of the kingdom, in a hasty, uneven scrawl that spoke all too clearly to what the writer had not intended to convey. Even without having him in the study speaking to her, Argeleb could taste the sourness of his fear curdling in the air above the letter he had sent her.

Six people in this village, four adults and two children, had fallen ill with an unidentified illness that the physician who had attended them was quite certain was, in fact, the same illness. They all exhibited similar symptoms: vomiting, high fever, intense headaches that rendered them unable to do much more than lie still in a dark room and moan in pain. And, most glaringly of all dotted in similar places across their bodies, on their neck, close to their armpits, and dotted on their abdomens, were inflamed, swollen, painful buboes.

Scattered across Argeleb’s desk were other missives, other reports she had received from more distant lands, more distantly in the past. They had come from Rhûn, come from Rhovanion, come from Harad and the leaderless little villages scattered throughout Eriador. And yes, some of them, many of them, had come from Gondor. All of them had borne her tales of illness, of rampant plague visiting house after house, depopulating whole villages. And all of them told her tales of symptoms just like the ones exhibited by these six people in this southern village.

Leering out of a grinning death’s head, the plague that had so ravaged Arthedain’s sister-kingdom to the south now stretched its fleshless fingers into Arthedain itself.

And so, Argeleb stood on the edge of a battlefield, but it was not a battle that could be won with sword or spears, with horses or shields. It was a battlefield that, in fact, she could walk across for miles and miles and days and days and never know if she was in the heart of it, until suddenly her flesh was blooming with those swollen and agonizing buboes and her head was swimming with blistering heat and her body was crumpling under the weight of its own pain. It was a battlefield that would move, would swim through the soil, sinking its tendrils in so far down in the soil that only time and fire would banish it completely, until it inevitably found its way to her.

Argeleb could not think of a battle she had ever wanted to avoid more. And Argeleb, as a rule, tried to arrange things so that they would not come to battle in the first place. But she was the ruler of this land, she was the queen over the people, and it did not go well for the people when their ruler, their queen, refused to fight the battles that needed to be fought to secure their future.

From one of her desk drawers, Argeleb took a sheet of thick vellum parchment, smooth and supple under her fingers, and cleared off enough space to lay that sheet of vellum down flat. She lit a candle, and then, finding that the gloom had coagulated while she was engrossed in the reading of the report and that this sole flame did little to properly illuminate her desk, she lit another.

Quill, quill, she needed a quill. Brow furrowing, biting back a self-exasperated sigh, Argeleb turned over sheets of paper, knocked aside scrolls and books, until she found not a quill, but the stylus her son had gifted her the last time he had had occasion to visit the Dwarves of the Blue Mountains. She was… To say that it was her favorite writing instrument would be a lie. She had kept it not to scorn a gift her son had given her, and not to scorn the diplomacy of the Dwarves, but she favored her quills, when she could find them.

She could not find a quill, and at any rate, neither could she find the knife she used to sharpen the points of her quills, so even if she had found a quill to write with, she would likely have needed to switch to the stylus eventually. Argeleb regarded the stylus without much affection, but she reached for her amber inkwell (a gift received with far fewer reservations or irritated sighs once in private), and dipped the stylus in the ink. She needed a writing instrument, and one with a tip she would not need to periodically stop to sharpen would be… Yes, she would admit that such a thing would be useful, for what she must do now.

Whether or not Argeleb would have gotten much sleep tonight, even without this set of directives to draft and re-draft and write and rewrite and ponder over and groan and gnash her teeth over, was an open question. She certainly did not think she would be getting _any_ sleep now. She must have something concrete to take to her councilors come the morning, something they could use as a starting point, and if she spent the night sleepless, if she spent that council session visibly tired and struggling not to doze off, she thought her councilors would understand. All they need do is look and see that she was wearing the same clothes she had been wearing the day before, see that her hand and probably her sleeve as well was stained with black ink, to understand why she came to them so visibly exhausted.

By the morning, she suspected that sleeplessness and _other_ factors would give her a headache so thunderous that wearing the circlet that was her badge of office might prove just too painful. Argeleb eyed the Elendilmir with something like animosity. Light as it was, it had ever sat uneasily upon her brow, for it had been fashioned for a man far larger than herself, and Argeleb could not help but imagine that, even though it had been fitted for her, it did not _really_ fit. The Dúnedain had dwindled since the days of Valandil; they had _certainly_ dwindled since the days of Princess Silmariën, for whom the original Elendilmir had been wrought. It had been made for men and women of higher blood than what no coursed through Argeleb’s veins.

The Elendilmir was Argeleb’s, regardless of what she thought of her blood compared to the blood of its original bearer. If she went to the council session without it on her brow, her councilors could take from that what they would, and Argeleb would care little for their opinions on how well she served the dignity of her throne, so long as something _meaningful_ was accomplished.

Argeleb went through many sheets of vellum parchment as she jotted down ideas for the dissemination of physicians and apothecaries and medicine and guards, as she speculated on food shipments and taxes and the control of roads and the control of traffic cross-country and she considered whether to send officials to the settlements of the Periannath to gather information there, to more closely enforce her laws in a place she had always treated with a light touch before. Many things would have to change, _so_ many things would have to change if this plague assailed Arthedain with even half the intensity with which it had ravaged Gondor.

It was possible that, by the end, she would not recognize her kingdom for what she had made of it. It was possible that no one would recognize Arthedain for what it had been before the plague. Argeleb thought that then, she would have time to mourn. She hoped that she would not be alone to do so, in a kingdom of graves and sepulchers. She hoped that any who despised the changes she made would still have voices with which to complain to her, vital voices with which they could call her a coward or a tyrant or anything else they pleased. She hoped that she was overreacting, and that they would call her a ninny on top of everything else. Argeleb hoped for so many things.

While she was writing, while she was hoping, while she was fearing and while she was beating down sleep where it clustered at the edges of her vision, turning everything to mist, the world was still turning. The world was still turning, and, more importantly, it yet moved on and on outside the confines of her study. The halls were not empty, and they did not sleep. Even in the dead of night, there were still guards, and servants, and the night was not dead, yet. There were others yet awake.

One of those pushed the door into Argeleb’s study gently open, without bothering to knock or announce himself first. And though Argeleb barely heard the creak of the door, and she did not truly register what it meant, she did register the shadow that fell across her writing when her son came to stand behind her desk.

“Mother?” His hand was gentle on her shoulder, gentler than Argeleb could recall, at least since that time twelve years ago when… but she would not think of that now, thinking of it now would only distract her. “Do you intend to spend the whole night writing?”

“If need be,” she replied, brittle-voiced. “There is much that must be done, my son, and if you have come here to offer your mother aid, I would not belittle it.”

“Who am I to refuse such a request from the queen?” Arvegil’s tone was lighter than Argeleb thought at _all_ appropriate for such circumstances as these, but he did indeed pull a chair close to her desk and take a large book from that desk to set on his lap as a prop for any parchment he might choose to write on, and that erased most of Argeleb’s irritation with him. “What sort of example would it set for the people if they saw their prince shirking his duties? Perfidy would become the new custom of the land.”

“Indeed,” Argeleb murmured, her stylus yet scratching across the parchment, almost of its own accord.

She had asked for help; indeed, she had, and had genuinely wanted the comfort of her son’s company on this fraught, momentous night. But now that Arvegil was here, sitting at her side, Argeleb could not think of a single thing to give him to do. She could, perhaps, have used him as a sounding board for ideas, or asked him if he had any of his own; certainly, the prince and future king of this land ought to at least be _thinking_ of ways he could give aid to his people. But Argeleb could not think of anything to _say_ to her son, now that he was here, and though she might grope in her mind for any way she could draw him by words and conversation into the business of preparing Arthedain as much as they could for what was coming for it, the words would not come.

Though she could exert herself to write about the measures that must be taken (if her councilors did not have better suggestions for her, anyways), Argeleb could not seem to find it in herself to speak of them. Not yet. The words were coming into her mind, they were leaving her mind and settling in her lungs like she had breathed in twenty pounds of dust out of the archives, and then, then, they were sticking in her throat. They congealed there, clinging to the inner walls of her throat, and stubbornly refused to climb any closer to her mouth.

Argeleb could only assume that if she gave it time, let it wait until the morning, then perhaps she would find the words ready to come, and her mouth willing to work. She had never been especially gregarious. Given his silence, Arvegil did not seem to take any real offense to it.

So Argeleb, unable to think of a way to involve her son in this that she could actually find it in herself to put into action, continued to write and rewrite and scribbled and ball up pieces of thick, soft vellum parchment in silence. So Arvegil at beside her in silence, and Argeleb never looked his way to see what expression he might wear on his face, shamed at the thought that she was wasting his time, fearing to see the impatience that might be etched into his skin.

He would be king, one day. If he had not already learned patience, then Argeleb did not know what to do with him. But indeed, he would be king, one day, and as prince, he already had certain responsibilities, certain duties. If Arvegil had decided that certain of those responsibilities, certain of their duties, were to be his on this night, then Argeleb kept him here when he should have been off, acting.

Knowing her son as she did, Argeleb rather suspected he would have said something to her by now if she was detaining him when he was better off being elsewhere. So far, he had said nothing to her, and had let her write in peace, let the candle burn down in peace, let her fraught thoughts race about her head in peace.

Perhaps whatever he had planned could wait until the morning.

Perhaps he felt that whatever it was he had planned was less important than waiting on the queen’s questions.

Argeleb could not say.

Or perhaps he, too, had simply been waiting for words that were not so easy in coming.

“Mother…” Arvegil paused, and then, a short, sharp huff of a laugh escaped his mouth, wavering with something like nervousness flavoring his voice. “I suppose it may be more accurate to say ‘My Queen,’ considering what I have come to ask of you.”

Argeleb set her stylus down. The stem had begun making her hand ache perhaps half an hour ago; it was a relief to have an excuse to set it down. A spare glance at her hand showed her that, indeed, both her skin and her sleeve was discolored with ink. But Tar-Elendil of Númenor had been called Parmaitë for his love of compiling books of lore and legends, and no doubt his skin had often been stained with ink. Even during times of trouble. She would not fear the thoughts of others regarding it.

She had so much more else to fear.

“To you,” she said, “I am both. In such a place as this, I will hardly be offended to hear my son address me as his mother. Whatever it is you wish of me, ask it. Whether I grant it or not is another matter, but whatever you have to say to me—“ her voice, she hoped, was firm enough to convey her meaning effectively “—I _will_ listen to it.”

After all, Argeleb had always listened to her son. Whether she granted his requests was another matter, especially when he had been a child and those requests had erred on the side of the ridiculous. But a mother must listen to her children as much as a queen must listen to her people. She had never shut her ears to anything he had to say to her.

When Argeleb turned to face Arvegil, his face was uncommonly grave. He had been a man for many years, and she had known him in solemnness, but he had ever been reasonably light-hearted, and she had rarely known him to be more somber than he was serious. She had given him the gift of a quiet land and a peaceful reign—she had known no greater gift she could give her child—and thus, there had been little cause for grief. The sight of such a grave expression on his face, though there was _certainly_ cause for such, put a hitch in Argeleb’s breath.

“I have heard the news,” he told her, nodding as if to steel himself. “News travels fast, and the messengers are inclined to share their news with more people than just those they bear the missives for.” He paused, sighing heavily. “And when we carry ill news, we wish to share it, so that we can seek succor from those inclined to give it. I know of what has befallen the line of Anárion.”

Argeleb nodded heavily. “Telemnar’s nephew rules now, over a much-diminished kingdom.”

Perhaps, in the days to come, if she could find any time for it at all, she would write to Tarondor of things other than simple condolences and sympathies. Perhaps she would give him what advice she could, though doubtless it was a different thing, being the ruler of a much larger, more powerful kingdom in the sunny south, than of a place like Arthedain. But Argeleb could not imagine that she would have any time for such a letter in the days to come. Perhaps not for the weeks to come.

And she had never met Tarondor, on top of that. She had little idea of what the man, this distant cousin of hers, was even like. Was he the sort of man who would gladly accept advice from a stranger? From a woman, at that—Gondor had never accepted any woman as ruler over the land, and Argeleb could imagine all too well what that law boded for the opinions of the men of Gondor as pertained to women’s faculties. The future would seem uncertain to Tarondor of Gondor for many years yet, she had no doubt, and she would not add the insult of the sister-kingdom to those uncertainties, if she could avoid it.

The uncertainty did not fail to itch at her, however, and Argeleb suspected that, within a few weeks, it would be an unbearable pestering in her mind.

“Come the morning,” Arvegil was saying, and now, he looked not grave, but grim, “I wish to ride to the southern village where those people have fallen ill. The people there will be frightened; they will wish for a strong hand to guide them back to some semblance of calm. Someone _should_ go,” he insisted in a slightly louder voice, as Argeleb opened her mouth to protest. “You are the queen; we cannot risk your death. It is not enough to send our officials, or our physicians, or our guards and our bailiffs. One of the royal family must go to them and see, if only for a short time, that the well-being of the people in that village is being seen to.”

A harsh, giddy laugh jarred from Argeleb’s mouth. She had earlier envisioned her flesh blooming with those buboes that plagued the villagers in the south, that would soon no doubt plague people all over Arthedain, but now, _now_ , her imagination had begun to conjure a rather different image. An image she had a rather more difficult time tolerating. “You say that the queen cannot risk visiting a site of infection. What of the _prince_? What of he who will someday be king, and him with no brothers or sisters to take up his responsibilities if he dies? What of _him_?” she demanded, voice pitching higher and severer on every last syllable, until the last was so close to a shout that she was surprised that the guards weren’t trying to come inside.

Arvegil did not flinch in the face of his mother’s reaction, instead meeting her gaze steadily. “Someone must go,” he said again, his voice as steady as his gaze. “I believe it should be me. You have always told me that to be king will mean that I must be as a father to our people. That I must be firm and stern when a strong hand is needed to guide them to righteousness, and that I must give them whatever comfort I am able when they are in need of reassurance. And you have told me that, though we have been blessed with many years of relative peace, that to be a king will never be _safe_. You have told me that there will be many occasions when I must risk my safety, or else abdicate my responsibility to my people. I think that such an occasion has come upon me now. The challenge is set; I must meet it.”

Argeleb did not answer him immediately. Instead, she drank in the sight of his face, resolute and set. She thought of him as a child. So long ago it had been, and now, her son had a little child of his own, a boy of three years who would be too young, _far_ too young, to take his father’s place as heir if Arvegil was to take ill and die.

The threads which bound their world were so very fragile. Argeleb had always been aware of that on some level, but the knowledge had come into stark focus, now.

Other knowledge had come into focus in the meantime.

Swallowing thickly, Argeleb nodded. “Go, then. I will allow you to go, but only if you swear to take the utmost care. It is a highly unnatural thing among the Dúnedain for children to grow to adulthood without their fathers, and I would not see my grandson grow up a fatherless boy. And I…” Her gaze dropped to her lap, to one hand unblemished, and one hand stained gray-black with ink. “It is also unnatural among the Dúnedain,” she muttered, “for parents to bury their children.”

The letter had told her that Telemnar had died alongside all of their children. The letter had not told her whether Telemnar had died first, or if he had seen some or all of his children go down into the cold embrace of the grave before him. There had been no notice that any new king had been crowned between Telemnar and Tarondor, but if any man who could have stood as Telemnar’s heir was deathly ill when his father passed from the circles of the world, would anyone have bothered with a coronation? Would there have been time?

And, indeed, she could see in her mind’s eye all too clearly the image of a man who in appearance could have been a brother, or perhaps a cousin of hers, sitting by a freshly-carved tomb, resting his head against the lid of the sarcophagus and straining his ears for a heartbeat that would never sound again.

Or perhaps they had burned those dead of plague in Gondor, and Telemnar cradled an urn of ashes instead.

Either way, she could see it as clearly as if it was playing out before her. And as Argeleb watched, the features of the man shifted, became something even more similar to her own.

She could not bear it.

“Do not ask me to bury you.” Her voice was toneless and nearly inaudible. “Do not ask me to bear what my heart cannot bear.”

Arvegil reached out and took her hands in his own, uncaring of the ink stains on the left. “I will ask no such thing of you,” he promised, “and I will take as much care as I am capable of. I swear it.”

Argeleb nodded choppily. “Then go. You must have many preparations more to make if you plan to leave in the morning. And you should look at the faces of your wife and your son before you leave, the better to know all of the reasons why you should ensure that you return to us intact.”

And with that, he left her to her parchment, and her stylus, and her ink, and everything she yet feared.

Argeleb took one long, aggravated look at the parchment, and then stood and abandoned it. She went to the window, where the night painted the windowpanes a deep, satiny blue-black. The stars shone on, untroubled and unaffected by the troubles of the world they so faintly illuminated. To Argeleb, they had ever been a source of beauty, but she had never taken solace in them. They were not capable of giving that to her.

Her gaze drifted downwards, to the courtyard, which under other circumstances might have been dark, but as it was a warm night and this _was_ a courtyard beneath the window of the queen’s study, it was well-lit with torches and lanterns.

Well-lit, and not empty.

A small pack of children, mostly boys, though there were some girls present as well, were playing a rousing game of kickball, though the name of the game might have changed since Argeleb was last a child young enough to sneak out from under her parents’ watchful gaze and go play such games in the courtyard with the other children. The glass was thick, and she could hear nothing that went on outside, but she could well imagine the shrieks of delight escaping their mouths as they played their game.

One of the boys noticed her watching, and stopped to salute her. There followed after that a smattering of salutes from the other boys; one of the girls made a clumsy curtsey. Argeleb responded to them with a nod of the head and a smile she could only hope their years were too few to realize was grotesquely strained, before she forced herself to wrench her eyes away.

The future of their people. These were the future of their people. Arthedain would have no future without them.

Argeleb returned to her desk, and thought of that every time she was tempted to quit her study and seek her bed. There was far too much work to be done for that.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Periannath** —‘Halflings’; the class plural form of ‘Perian,’ the Sindarin name for the Hobbits (singular: Perian) (plural: Periain) (Sindarin)


End file.
